Does Megan’s Law Put A Scarlet Letter On A Sex Offender’s Former Address?

Does the Megan’s Law website actually hurt some homeowners or renters?

A La Puente woman says it does and that she has become the target of vandals. CBS2’s Randy Paige investigated and discovered a loophole in the law that could put future homeowners and renters at risk. Full Article

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Homeowners and renters will be seeing this problem multiply ten fold over the next couple of years. It’s just a small inconvenience to the general public in order to achieve the goal of Megan’s law. And not to worry, Laura Ahearn any maybe her close “business” associates will probably never let this issue affect them. Maybe they have the “Resources” to divert such an unconstitutional and HUMILIATING hardship.

Welcome to the Price Club, remember that this is for the public good. Your rights are not being violated as long as the public think it might save just 1 child. Evidence that this will save any child will be provided at a much later date (maybe).

“If your home is seen as a sex offender’s home, you’re much more likely to be vandalized, you’re much more likely to be socially ostracized,” she said. “And believe me, the people who will discriminate against you because they think you’re a sex offender will never tell you. They’ll either show up in the middle of the night and break the windows of your car or they won’t let you into the college or the club that you should get into.”

“A website called Homefacts continues to show ____ ____ address as a sex offender’s home, even using the same photograph, weeks after Megan’s Law updated his address to a Motel 6 in Hacienda Heights.

If we are asking too much for the government to admit that the registry is punishment, how about they admit that we are punished (by law enforcement, the media, by politicians, by our neighbors, employers, by society as a whole) for being on the registry. Examples: unemployed, homeless, murdered. A little harder to argue against that I would think. If it’s administrative as they try and suggest, the registry would only be available to LE.

Perfect, just a perfect example of an innocent person being impacted by the stupidity of politician’s ideas on a registry. I am empathetic for her at this time because it is scary for her and her family.

Politicians will say she did not do her homework on who she rented the home to and account for no accountability here.

Hopefully puts in a security system at the new home to catch others who may continue this for evidence to be used later.

My thoughts exactly. I’m sure it will be sorted out eventually, and the red dot identifying her house as a place that demons dwell will likely vanish. She should consider herself lucky the house wasn’t rented to a drug dealer- or she might not have a house at all.

Perhaps I grazed by it, but what exactly is the loophole in the law they are referring to?

@Nondescript:
Good question. Last time I checked, a loophole was a method of slipping through what a law says or intends. Getting caught up in a law beyond what it intends is another sort of loop: a noose!

Just being completely serious, and ignoring (for the moment) any sensation of schadenfreude that I may feel as a result of these kinds of reports (which I have to admit I do feel) this is very good for us in the long run. I hope that any challenge we launch against the Registry will include examples of this sort for laying out an unequivocal case for why registration is punishment.

The same would be true for such things as having to pay for the privilege of registering (in some states). I hope that when the lawsuit is filed that we all have an opportunity to make sure that these many injustices are elements of the challenge

But the injustice, in this case is, ironically, suffered by your neighbors. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Registry were to be brought-down by angry neighbors? Ha! I’m not holding my breath, though because it seems like most people still want the Registry despite their own personal hardships as its result. That means that the Registry has become a religion because it causes people to lose their critical faculties and to abandon rational self-interest.

I dislike the fact that they posted the registrant’s name in the article. As if he wasn’t already going through a lot. As for the woman in this article, it sucks that she seemingly threw the man “under the bus” so to speak. But it equally sucks that she has/had to go through this. The fact that her home was vandalized, I think, is a fear that many of us fear as well.

“You have to stay on top of it. You have to make changes; you have to do something, because this is horrible. This has changed my life, making me a victim and a target.”

You don’t say? A public registry made someone a victim and a target? I’ll refer you to Smith vs Doe 2003 that says you’re wrong. It’s really no big deal. Surely they would’ve corrected this by now if it were.

I have always wondered about the consequences incurred of having these stupid red dots on maps identifying registrants who live in condos and duplexes. Seems like the immediate neighbors could become a target of vigilantism too.

You’re 100% correct on that, which is why I support all manner of registries for every infraction, from child abusers to animal abusers, batterers to murders, sidewalk spitters, office thieves and tax cheats, to the registry, all of you!

I’m guessing the “solution” will be to make RCs update more often. What other answer can there be, after all? Oh wait, how about the Government stops distributing the information to 3rd parties? Oh wait, how about the registry goes away or, at worst, becomes a LE-only item? Naw….that’s all silly talk. Gotta nail them RCs a little harder.

@AJ ,,,,, ,, ,, your right they will bang on RC’s harder , and try to make it impossible to not brake some stupid and over reaching rule that one must have an attorney to decipher , all the same your comment was funny 🙂 their are all ready more questions on the forms for price club day , than there is for getting a drivers license , and almost as many regulations

Just for kicks, I went on Zillow to get a general idea of home prices in my neighborhood and found my home to be about 150k below all the others. WTF? Apart from comps, I don’t know what other data they aggregate to come up with these numbers. My house is among the nicest on the street (part of my revenge strategy is to live a good life and let everyone see me doing it) and houses that are the same model as mine, but (IMO) in dire need of TLC, show a much higher value.

What gives – is it because of my RC status?

We plan to upgrade to a bigger home in the next few years. Ideally, we’ll keep our current house and rent it out for income. But if we need to sell it, I’m thinking of taking a cheap apartment until the house address is no longer associated with the Megan’s Law site, then put it in the market.
If anyone has recommendations as far as biying amd selling homes as an RC, please chime in.

Bring the typo to zillow’s attention and make them tell you why they think it’s that listed price and not the same as the others. Make them defend their position to you. Raise a stink with them and then tell everyone.

Zillow is a marketing tool and not be all home value tool. That’s what comps etc are for.

Not sure what state you live in but ignore Zillow. It’s a joke. There’s a reason why banks insist an appraiser see the property to value it. I’m a California Certified General Appraiser. (Highest level the State has). Anyone who uses your RC status to lower your value could lose their license. We do look at “risk” factors if you lived in a high crime area but all of the comps would share the same impact to marketability. Most likely it’s something else. Happy to answer questions to help you but just like the Megans Law website, Zillow isn’t accurate. Get a real appraiser, not some automated value.

I don’t think that Zillow is at all reliable. Formerly, like nine months ago, my house on Zillow showed it to be worth 1.5M (which I think to be a bit high) and later it had a ridiculously low value of several hundred thousand. Now it has no estimated value at all. Something changed at Zillow in their policies and algorithms that made everything screwy. A lot of people have commented on it.

As I pointed out last month, your homes’ value, as a Registrant, is not, ironically, the one that will suffer in the marketplace since it is your presence that lowers your NEIGHBOR’S property value and when you seel you will no longer be in the neighborhood after you sell. This will be apparent to any potential buyer.

Thank you for your response, and that is more inin with what I’d expect to see – if it’s true that my presence negatively impacts home values in my neighborhood, mine would be valued higher than the others.

While Zillow may be going through weird algorithms now, it is a fact that proximity to registered sex offender houses are affected significantly. In addition, the average duration of the length of time a residence is registered is less than one year, an abnormal transiency rate for any individual group. There are several studies with ranges from 4% – 19% effect.

(In the past, I joked about getting a financial group together, one of whom is a registrant. The group would first buy the house for the registrant, which would depress the values of the houses around him within weeks. Within two or three months, at least one or two houses would be put on the market with this depressed price. The consortium would buy the houses. Once enough houses were purchased, the registrant would “move,” releasing the restrictions on the property. The houses which property values were initially depressed now reverted to normal market rate, and after resale would render significant profit to the consortium.)

Hey Eric! You stole my idea, proposed at least three times here starting several years ago and again within the last several months. I think you owe me a finder’s fee or a methodology royalty on all of those properties you flip 🙂 I have prior art. ________ Alternatively, we could go into business together. Shall we do it? Maybe start up a nationwide REIT (real estate investment trust).

of course it does, registries can be months and years behind from being updated, and it is common knowledge that Megan’s Law Website is full of errors. It would be quite entertaining to see some of these vigilantes’ faces if they found their address was incorrectly listed.

so its a problem if its her kid something can happen to ? what about all of the RC’s kids and grand kids ? I hope a lot more stuff like this happens , not that I wish to see anyone hurt , but the fact is that it is going on every day to RC’s and their familys , dang if they want to sell fear or use the registry for entertainment , let them have the full effect

This is really tricky and would come smack-up against the First Amendment. This will require some legal research if we were to find a way around it. What was true at one time was, after all, still true if only as an historical fact. There’s no law against publishing an historical fact. If they changed their page to indicate that that person is no longer on the Registry having aged-out or otherwise removed but kept the page with your picture, address, case information, conviction dates, etc. that may be completely allowable as an historical record. I’m not sure how you can compel them to remove it altogether. Government would have to change the law, I suspect, to make past conviction data that has since been vacated a form of contemporary libel. Not easy.

My Gawd,
Living in expensive homes and financially able to travel the world with a derogatory statement on your passports. Oh boo hoo!
Not much empathy shown when I read about so many here just struggling to survive.

I’ve struggled to survive, too. When I got out of prison twenty-four years ago I worked my ass off seven days a week, 15 hours a day for the next two decades until I lost my company three years ago because I could no longer travel. During those decades I built two companies up from the ground. If you think that’s easy then you know nothing about the daunting challenges that launching a manufacturing business represents.

You should focus less on your petty jealousy, envy and resentment and more about generating unity in this movement.

I forgot to mention, when I got out of prison I didn’t have a dime to my name. Well, there was “gate money” which was, what, less than a hundred dollars? Your class-envy won’t get you too many admirers here. They know the meaning of struggle and, mostly, don’t begrudge someone who was able to succeed against the odds. If it makes you feel any better, my resources are quickly dwindling since my company went belly-up because, with IML, I could no longer meet with customers or suppliers. Oh, and I don’t want or need your sympathy or “empathy.”

IML actually greatly limits being able to travel the world. Most places outside of mainland Europe are a no-go.

People who are currently facing this issue are people who have already went through the struggle of rebuilding their lives, yet still are on a leash decades later.

We’re all at different points in our lives. We can be thankful that we’re doing better than someone else, but that doesn’t mean we should stop fighting for something more. I mean, whatever struggles a registrant is going through now, even if homeless, is certainly a far cry than the struggles other people are going through in another parts of the world. There’s always someone who has it worse.

True, Alex, but this doesn’t stop my heart going out to David Kennerly…and all of us so negatively affected by these…new laws…these new Punishments imposed on us. They are harsh, the are harmful, they are hurtful, they are an insult to a just society.

With all this being said, I might also add that all these new people being taken down almost daily now on these sexual harassment claims cannot be good news for us as a group. I first might note that many of these allegations are far, far worse than anything I did…or most of us probably, (the forced oral copulation charge today, or the violent rapes, {actual, not the kind that are just legally imposed called rape, though not factually rape, at least to my mind} are shocking even to me.)

In any case, we are living in a bad time for our kind of problems…and I feel sorry for all of us.

Nah. It’ll pass. American’s have an incredibly short attention span. There’s always something new around the corner to catch the medias eye and most people follow suite. Besides, I doubt vast majority of these allegations will result in legal prosecution. I’m glad so many victims are feeling empowered to finally come forth and prevent these people from hurting others in the future, but the media hype we’ve seen in the last week or two will not last.

“With all this being said, I might also add that all these new people being taken down almost daily now on these sexual harassment claims cannot be good news for us as a group. ”

Well, maybe not. This steady and relentless escalation of the sex offender wars is starting to get some serious pushback. A dividing line separating the obsessive hysterics from rational people concerned for the sanity of our country has gotten wider. It is becoming harder-and-harder to ignore what can only be seen as a form of mass-hysteria.

Did I miss something in civics class, or are civil rights now means tested? Regardless of whether David K., you, me, or whomever has $1.00 or $100M, we all suffer the same indignities. Did you miss the post he made recently about a bag of garbage at his gate? Haters don’t care or see a “wealthy” person, they just see a non-person.

TLB, why do you think so many RCs struggling to survive? I have seen it first hand, many can not think out of the box, many do not want to work at general labor. Most people with a criminal past have a difficult time but many such as David worked damn hard to get to where they are, they were not sitting on their azz all day. I know a great deal of RCs that have built businesses out of nothing. So when you are struggling get off your dead azz and help yourself, that is the only way. Yes we are at a very big disadvantage but some will find a way to not struggle.

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